Memories of moms are unforgettable
I’m so lucky to have had a mother … especially one who was also my best friend and confidante.
Incredibly, once in a while, I must forget that she’s gone, because mentally I reach for the telephone to call her. She’s the first person I want to call when something exciting – or terrible – happens. But, sometimes I simply want to talk to her.
My sister feels the same way – and she even goes so far as to quip, “Mothers should never die!”
Most of us can talk to our moms about anything and everything. Is there anybody else in the world like that? There is a level of intimacy between mothers and their children that seldom exists in any other relationship.
Whether our mothers are still on this earth or they’re in Heaven, and whether they were fierce matriarchs or just plain moms – our memories of them are unforgettable. I love to remember my mom tucking me into bed at night, or the days my sister and I would come home from school to find freshly baked chocolate chip cookies waiting for us.
The joys of cooking and gardening – still two of my greatest pleasures – were first learned at her side. Besides learning how to garden, cook and do (ugh!) housework and other life skills, I absorbed her values, attitudes and passions for life. Inevitably these times were liberally peppered with irreverent silliness and laughter, which of course only enhanced the learning experience.
Growing up with someone who thinks we’re just the cat’s meow is one of the best things that can happen to us … and that person can just as well be a grandparent, a foster or adoptive mother, an aunt, a dad or an uncle. The domain of mothering reaches far beyond that of being a female of a certain age.
However, looking back I sometimes wonder if my mother lived a life of quiet desperation.
Motherhood and housewifery were not exactly the kind of future Mom had envisioned for herself. She was a crackerjack secretary at the Board of Trade in Chicago’s financial district, and she just loved her job. She was there on Black Friday, the day of the stock market crash of 1929, and she personally witnessed people jumping out of the windows of tall buildings.
That was, of course, the beginning of the disastrous Great Depression of the 1930s. My mother had her own disaster – she became pregnant with me. She had to leave her job, and Dad had just graduated from college. Somehow we all lived through it, ‘cause here I am.
My mother accepted her life’s new direction with resignation and nobility. She threw herself into the job of being the best mother and housewife ever. And she succeeded. In fact, she was an absolute perfectionist and she taught me how to be one, too. (I don’t exactly thank her for that, however.)
My mother was well-known for her irreverent one-liners. At age 83, as she lay groggily in a hospital bed, both lungs punctured from a botched attempt to install a pacemaker, the doctor said to my daughter and me, “I don’t think it’s wise to put her under a general (anesthesia).” Out of her semiconscious state, and in her very best wise-cracking voice, she shot out, “You’re not putting me under any general!”
Mom was also a news junkie, devouring the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Dallas Morning News, daily. To say the least, she was well-informed.
One day, I popped in on her to share some frightening news I had just heard on the radio. I said, “Moammar Gadhafi is going to attack the United States!” She cried out, “What! Are you kidding?” She threw her head back and started laughing incredulously, finally falling back into her chaise, gasping, “That little pipsqueak … who does he think he is?”
Mom did not walk through life half-conscious; she was thoroughly engaged in life – until she was age 88, when she started a downward slide into dementia and anger.
Does everyone have a secret longing to talk to his or her mother? I suspect they do.
Yes, I want to talk to my mother. Mainly, I’d just like to talk to her about the everyday stuff … “How are you feeling?” Or, “How’s the needlepoint project coming along?” And, sometimes, I’d just like some sympathy.
And what I would give to see her looking at me over her glasses, with a cup of coffee in one hand and her newspaper in the other, expounding on the politics of the day. She’d be having a hissy-fit if it were today.
Yes, I feel so lucky to have had a mother. And you might say I’m still not over her … but, where does it say we’re supposed to get over our mothers, anyway?